The invention relates to a device for producing printing plates comprising a printing down station with a plate table and an associated illuminating means, which station has associated with it a foil containing means preferably constituted by a foil cassette for unprinted foil and preferably at least one receiving cassette for printed foil, in the case of which the foil to be printed onto an unexposed or blank printing plate is able to be taken from a foil containing means by means of a moving vacuum frame, is able to be moved onto the blank plate on the plate table and after exposure is able to be discharged, preferably into a receiving cassette.
A device of this type is described in the German utility model publication 8,813,594 U. In this known device there is a vacuum frame which straddles the plate table and is only able to be moved vertically so that it may be used for unloading from a laterally insertable cassette and loading a laterally insertable receiving cassette as the cassette is moved under it. In order to achieve the necessary accurate register it is necessary for the vacuum frame to be indexed in relation to the foil cassette by locating pins. The same applies in relation to the plate table. All this not only makes the device slow in operation so that the hourly output rate is low, but also necessarily leads to wear and thus inaccurate operation. A further point is that the known device runs with comparatively long intervals between the consecutive printing down operations, because when only one vacuum frame is employed there is no overlap in time of the individual working steps. Another point is that in the known apparatus the speed at which the laterally inserted cassettes are moved is restricted in order to reduce noise and wear and thus to increase reliability.